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View Full Version : Why no AM tuners?

s-one
05-25-2005, 14:09
Why do Digital Audio Players that come with radio tuners are always FM? I do listen to some stations on AM. Just curious. Thanks.
David H
05-25-2005, 15:35
The DAPs that have AM tuners are very expensive. This is mainly because they need an added time machine to transport you back to the 1970's. :p
austinv
05-25-2005, 15:38
too much interference from the internal electronics.. doesn't work
tsayin
05-25-2005, 18:25
I always figured they were too cheap to add the tiny ammount of extra electronics, since most people aren't interested in AM anyway.
Enu
06-03-2005, 01:20
I thought it had something to do with size - that, for some reason, there's some minimum size that AM radios have to be that wouldn't fit in most DAPs.
Caravaggio
06-03-2005, 01:27
The DAPs that have AM tuners are very expensive. This is mainly because they need an added time machine to transport you back to the 1970's. :p
LOL. Yeah, quality does suck, but there are some very interesting shows that you can only get on AM. For instance has anybody ever heard Art Bell, Coast to Coast AM, or Dreamland. All these shows are on at 1 -2 AM and focus on paranormal subjects like aliens and stuff, very interesting.

Now I wish the X5 had AM so I could record the show while I sleep.
hagbardceline
06-04-2005, 16:40
Of course, there is the problem with the interference - but there's another point. FM tuners in DAPs don't need any antenna - they just use the headphone cable. As the ideal antenna has 1/2 of the wavelength (which is 3 metres in the FM band), this is OK - differences lower the reception quality, but the loss is not very big.

In the AM band, the wavelength is between 200 and 600 metres, so the most radios use a little rod out of iron with a copper coil around it. This is too bulky (and quite heavy) for flash players, and I better don't want to imagine what happens if this thing is placed next to a HDD...

@Caravaggio: The only solution is that you connect a radio that receives AM (using the Headphone or the Line-Out jack) to the Line-In of the X5 and record the show this way...
s-one
06-05-2005, 00:27
cool info guys. I never knew why it was this way but greatly enlightened. Thanks for informing me.
IdontexistM8
06-16-2005, 16:25
Sony and many others been able to make these small pocket radios (smaller than most flash daps & lightweight) with the AM band for years now. I've got one and it's extremely good.

There might be some mild interference in a flash player but not to the point where it couldn't be reduced with a very small amount of shielding.
PRentz15
11-04-2005, 00:25
Definitely too much interference in the X5 for AM. I tested it out with my portable am/fm player. The AM stations faded out significantly any time the X5 was placed near it. FM worked fine.

I'm not sure how much shielding it would take to make AM useable on the X5. My guess is that it's not practical, so they just left it out.
Erasure4ever
11-05-2005, 04:45
Definitely too much interference in the X5 for AM. I tested it out with my portable am/fm player. The AM stations faded out significantly any time the X5 was placed near it. FM worked fine.

I'm not sure how much shielding it would take to make AM useable on the X5. My guess is that it's not practical, so they just left it out.

You tested it with X5 on or off?? If on was it playing a song file?
PRentz15
11-07-2005, 00:12
That's a good point. It was with the X5 ON, and a music file playing. I tried it again with the X5 on an FM channel but there was still some interference on my AM radio. Then again the hard drive was probably still spinning causing a lot of the interference.
608zz
11-07-2005, 15:15
Sony and many others been able to make these small pocket radios (smaller than most flash daps & lightweight) with the AM band for years now. I've got one and it's extremely good.

There might be some mild interference in a flash player but not to the point where it couldn't be reduced with a very small amount of shielding.
I agree, it would be easy to include a decent AM-tuner in a flash-based DAP. I too have one of these small Sony radios that has FM, AM, and even Weatherband. I wish the iAudio flash players had Weatherband, that could be set to automatically kick-in during emergencies such as tornado warnings, even when the user is listening to an audio file.
notguilty
11-07-2005, 16:13
The tuning part of those radios would add at least half an inch the whole player, though (maybe more), where they aim to try to be very small. A tuner dongle would be awesome, though.